Let It Die
by cakeismyreligion
Summary: John has finally had enough. / Starts pre-series, then goes through A Study in Pink. Contains swearing and mentions drug addiction.


**Beth asked for a songfic, so I gave her a songfic. The title and lyrics are from _Let It Die_, by the Foo Fighters.**

* * *

_In too deep and lost in time,_  
_Why'd you have to go and let it die?_  
_Beautiful veins and bloodshot eyes,_  
_Why'd you have to go and let it die?_

* * *

John picked his way through the rubbish that littered the hallways, remembering how relieved he'd been when his boyfriend had finally moved out of his dump of a flat. Granted, the rent on Sherlock's new one was higher- something he complained about regularly- but it was cleaner, quieter and, John's favourite thing about it, not full of junkies.

John had thought the days of visiting and finding Sherlock as high as a kite had passed when he'd moved out of there, away from the influence and closer to John's own flat. He recalled the agonising weeks spent helping Sherlock through withdrawal, all while at the same time desperately studying for his final exams.

When he reached the familiar door, he hesitated. It was so, so tempting to just leave, to pretend he didn't know and keep things as they were... But really, did he _want_ to keep things as they were?

He pushed open the door.

It was mostly empty. Obviously no one else had moved in after Sherlock had vacated the place. There was, however, a slumped figure over on the floor by the window. John, his hands clenched in fists in an attempt to hide their shaking, made his way slowly over.

After inspecting him for a moment, John realised that Sherlock was in fact conscious, and just in a daydream, or a hallucination. Unable to think of what to say, John cleared his throat. Sherlock stirred. John, after getting used to seeing how incredibly alert Sherlock had been recently, felt like screaming.

"John?" Sherlock whispered in dawning horror. "John, I didn't…" Dazed, he reached out a shaking hand, trying to cling on to the material of John's coat, but John stepped back until he was out of reach. Sherlock stared at him in panic.

"I- John, it was Victor, he made me, he wanted me to-"

"Victor is a _drug dealer_," John hissed at him. "Of course he wants you to, it's his _job_."

"But John, please John, I'm sorry-"

"You aren't, Sherlock!" John yelled, composure finally breaking. "You're not sorry for the drugs, you're just sorry that I found out!"

"That's not it, John," Sherlock wailed. "I'm not- it's not a problem, I just…" He wavered, holding back a sob. "John, don't leave me, you can't, you can't-"

John let out a contemptuous laugh. "Oh, Sherlock, I most certainly can." He let out a shuddering breath. "And I most certainly will."

"No," Sherlock looked as if he were too scared to even blink, lest John vanish. "John, no, no please John, oh God-" Sherlock voice broke, and he let out a real sob. He opened his mouth to say more but all that came out was more gasping wails. Tears spilled over his lashes.

John felt sick looking at him. He turned his back and, barely able to see the grotty room through his own unshed tears, walked to the door, managing to keep a steady pace.

"John, no John, I love you, please don't leave me here, _John please I need you oh god John don't_-"

By the time John had broken into a run Sherlock's state of mind had apparently reached hysterical levels and was letting out howls of pure misery that followed John through several hallways and down a staircase before he was out of hearing range, and even then the sound of them rang over and over in his head.

He had to blink several times when he emerged from the block of flats, to let his eyes readjust to daylight. He was gasping himself now, and as he put up a hand to block the sun he spotted a fancy black Jaguar parked across the road.

John stalked over and wrenched the door open, revealing Mycroft in his impeccable suit. "Don't start, Mycroft, don't even bloody start," he said, before the latter could get a word out.

"John, if you would take a seat-" Mycroft started tersely, before John interrupted.

"No. I'm finished with _him_," he waved a hand wildly over his shoulder. "And I am definitely finished with _you_."

Mycroft looked startled at John's outburst; he had only ever been polite and courteous with him. He shifted minutely, evidently unable to contain his discomfort.

"I don't want you to do anything rash-"

"Rash?" John stared at him incredulously. "Like what? Stop wasting my life on someone who's obviously never going to change?"

"You've been good for him, John, I've never seen him so-"

"You might take that back after you've gone and pulled his sorry arse out of that shithole." John let out a bitter laugh. "Good, was I? Out of the three years we've been together, how long has he stayed sober, Mycroft?"

Mycroft dropped his gaze. "He was just getting his life back together. Don't you think he deserves a life?"

"Don't you think _I_ deserve a life?" John demanded. "One that isn't spent cleaning up after every mistake Sherlock makes? Now, I don't know what you think of me, but I'm not so pathetic that I think that's the best I can do for myself. I can't live like that anymore. I told him that, you know," John continued, peering down at Mycroft, who was still averting his gaze. "Guess he made his choice, didn't he?"

"He'll be ruined without you," was the reply, but its tone was defeated. Mycroft seemed to know he'd lost.

"The only person that can save Sherlock is himself," John said, and he believed it. Sherlock had tried to get clean for John, but his heart hadn't been truly in it. If Sherlock were to ever recover, John had no doubt that it would be when Sherlock wanted to, not when he was told to. "Goodbye, Mycroft."

When Mycroft finally looked back, his eyes were sad. "Goodbye, John."

* * *

John couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't even think. The petri dish that Sherlock had been holding slipped through his fingers and smashed on the floor. Neither noticed.

"Well," Mike started, having the nerve to sound cheerful. "I'm sure you boys have a lot to catch up on. I'll leave you to it, shall I?" He grabbed a stack of folders and- determinedly avoiding looking at either of them- fled. The door snapped shut. They stared at each other. John prayed for Sherlock to break the silence first.

"You nearly died," Sherlock said blankly.

Not what he'd been hoping for, but he could work with it. "Yes," John said, because, really, what else could he say?

"You were shot. But not in the leg, your limp's psychosomatic." Sherlock looked at him intently, gaze shifting over him. "Shoulder. The left one." He opened his mouth to elaborate further, but winced and looked away instead. He gripped the edge of the desk. "How dare you nearly die?" he asked quietly.

"Sorry. Although it wasn't really my fault, you know." John spoke without thinking. Apparently bantering with Sherlock was something you never forgot. Sherlock scowled at his microscope.

Still not quite able to believe that he had the man right before his eyes after nearly a decade, John took the opportunity to scrutinise Sherlock carefully. He looked- well, perhaps 'healthy' was not entirely accurate. He was still far too skinny and as pale as a corpse. But his skin was clear, he was dressed impeccably- he even looked as if he had product in his hair, for Christ's sake. He was obviously doing a far, far better job of looking after himself than he'd been doing when John had left. Those steady hands, that clear gaze- he looked _sober_. And after all, Mike would never have brought John here today if he hadn't been.

John spoke impulsively. "Mike says you're looking for a flatmate."

Sherlock turned back to face John immediately, eyes narrowed. "Yes," he said slowly. "Mrs Hudson… Do you remember?"

As if he could ever forget one of Sherlock's cases. "Of course I do. What has she-?"

"She's giving me a special deal on a flat." Sherlock nodded once and then flew into action, wrapping a scarf around his neck and shoving on an enormous coat. "We'll meet there tomorrow evening, seven o'clock." He brushed past John and was already halfway out the door by the time John gathered his wits about him.

"Ah, Sherlock?"

He paused, reluctantly turning back. "What?" he asked defensively, trying to hide how flustered he was. John couldn't hold back a smile.

"Address?" he prompted, raising an eyebrow. Sherlock glared at him. John's smile widened.

"221b Baker Street," he said, vanishing from sight and letting the door slam shut behind him.

* * *

John jumped when there a loud thumping started on the front door. He glanced at his watch- only half five. He'd just been about to have a last cuppa before setting off for Baker Street.

Grabbing his cane, he hurried over to open the door, and revealed a hyper Sherlock.

"There's been another suicide!"

"Huh?"

"You know what I'm talking about, you posted about it on your blog! The serial suicides? There's been a new one," Sherlock reeled off. When John apparently failed to show the appropriate level of enthusiasm, he added, "This one has left a _note_!"

"That's… good?" John tried.

Sherlock seemed to deflate a little. "Aren't you coming?"

"What- _where_?" John waved his cane around in frustration.

"The crime scene!"

"Oh! Um, isn't that sort of," John cast around for a slightly less incriminating word, but gave up quickly. "Illegal?"

"No," Sherlock said immediately. John narrowed his gaze suspiciously. "Maybe," he admitted, "but Lestrade invited me and I'm inviting you, so…"

"Okay," John said, after watching Sherlock's lower lip pout out ever so slightly. "Let me get my shoes."

* * *

John clenched his hand into a fist. It really wasn't a good idea to punch someone at a crime scene, so he held back.

If one more person called Sherlock a freak, though…

Well, maybe it would be worth it.

"Oh," Sherlock's eyes widened, and he clapped his hands together. "Oh!"

John called his name down the stairs, while Lestrade asked anxiously. "What? What is it?"

"Serial killer's always hard…" he said happily. "You've got to wait for them to make a mistake."

"We can't just wait!" Lestrade said frantically, running both hands through his hair.

Sherlock yelled back, and they continued arguing until Sherlock finally snapped his gaze back to John. "What are you still doing up there? Come _on_!"

John glanced at Lestrade and smiled apologetically, before hobbling back down the staircase before Sherlock could disappear completely.

He was waiting for John outside, visibly shaking with impatience.

"What are we doing?"

"Getting Jennifer Wilson's case," he explained, turning on his heel.

"Her case? I though-"

"I have a few ideas," Sherlock interrupted cheerfully. "See, once the murderer realised they still had the case, they'd have tried to get rid of it as quickly as possible…"

* * *

"Who's this?" the enormous bearded man asked delightedly. "A date?"

"John is an old friend," Sherlock interrupted smoothly.

He barely blushed at all.

"Hello," John said as his hand was shaken enthusiastically. "How do you two-?"

"This man," he begun, pointing at Sherlock as if he thought John didn't know whom he was referring to, "got me off a murder charge!"

"Oh," John said in surprise. "You have been busy," he directed at Sherlock.

"So have you," he said defensively. "And yes, I helped prove to the police that Angelo was not guilty of committing three vicious murders as he was in an entirely different part of town, housebreaking."

"How nice!" John said, trying to smile. Angelo obviously didn't notice anything off about it, as he beamed back.

"I'll get a candle for the table- it's more romantic!"

"You don't need to…" John trailed off when he realised he was being wholly ignored. "All right, then," he said meekly as the tiny candle was set down.

Angelo bustled off, leaving their table in silence.

John tugged at his collar. "You've, ah… taken a lot of cases, then?"

Sherlock cleared his throat. "Mm, quite a few." He didn't look away from the window.

John furiously searched his mind for something to talk about. On the plus side, he thought of a topic. Unfortunately, what he blurted out was, "I'm single, by the way."

Sherlock blinked at his own reflection in the window.

_Christ! _John hated himself. _Could I sound any more desperate?_ He blamed the bloody candle.

"There," Sherlock finally said, nodding to across the street. "Taxi; no one getting in, no one getting out."

"You think that's our murderer?" John asked, silently thanking him for the interruption.

"One way to find out," Sherlock said, already heading outside.

John quickly followed, just in time to see Sherlock getting hit by a car. "Shit!"

* * *

"It's a drugs bust!"

John froze, and noticed Sherlock do the same in his periphery vision. He kept his breathing even, despite the doubt suddenly flooding his mind.

But no. Lestrade looked entirely too cheerful to really believe Sherlock had a stash of cocaine secreted somewhere in the flat, and Sherlock looked furious, and possibly a little embarrassed, too. He did not, however, look guilty or upset, which is what John knew he would be if he'd truly been found out.

John also noted that the officers were searching in hiding places that Sherlock would've deemed far too obvious to actually use.

Relaxing ever so slightly, John started paying attention to the conversations happening around him.

"Are these _human_ eyes?" exclaimed Sergeant Donovan, holding up a dubious looking jar.

"Put those back!" Sherlock cried desperately, waving his hand at her.

"They were in the microwave," she said suspiciously.

"It's an _experiment_," Sherlock said, exasperated. He met John's eyes, apprehensive. John smiled slightly. _It's all fine. I've seen worse, haven't I? _Sherlock didn't smile back, but John saw the tension leave him faintly.

"Keep looking guys!" Lestrade called out cheerfully.

"This is _childish_," Sherlock muttered mutinously, and started to pace- two of the best indicators that he was preparing to enter a sulk of epic proportions.

"Well, I'm dealing with a child," Lestrade said back, and, amazingly, he still sounded calm. Despite his initial hesitation towards him earlier, John decided right there that the man was a saint.

* * *

Dammit, dammit, dammit!

They stopped to let a man with a pram cross the road, and John bit his lip to hold back the stream of obscenities he longed to throw at the driver. He glanced down at the screen and his heart nearly froze.

"Okay, I need to go to, uh, Roland Kerr Further Education College," he quickly informed the cabbie, who had been getting steadily more grumpy as John had kept telling him to turn left or right. He got a grunt in response. "And make it fast, yeah?"

They were there in ten minutes. John threw about fifty quid at him. It was all he had until his next pension payment came through, but he was sure that Sherlock would loan him anything he needed until then, anyway.

And if he were too late then, well, none of that would matter.

No, he would make it. Sherlock had talked himself out of worse. That's all he had to do, keep the killer talking, he must know that John would work it out, right? He knew to distract him, buy himself time-

John stared at the empty cab desperately. There were no footprints, nothing to indicate which building they'd gone into. Sherlock would've been able to tell, John knew.

"Shit," he whispered, before running to the building on his right.

There were lights on down all the halls, and he could hear the rumbling of a hoover somewhere in the distance. John set off at a run along the corridor straight ahead, peering through every door and window in his path.

Nothing.

Upstairs.

Nothing.

Upstairs.

"Come on," John bit out, taking the stairs two at a time. "Where the _fuck_ are you, Sherlock?"

With every step he took, the more breathless he became. By the time he reached the top of the stairs he was gasping.

_Please, God, _he prayed, to whatever deity had taken pity upon him in Afghanistan. _Please, not now. Not now._

They could work, they could really, really work- John could see it then, like the opposite of his own life flashing before his eyes, he could see their future and there would be cases and fights and takeaways and laughter and it was so close, he couldn't lose it now, it would kill him-

He'd picked wrong.

He stared through the window, a dull horror spreading through him like wildfire.

The cabbie was focused intensely on Sherlock, who had his back to the window.

He had the pill raised above his head, but he was slowly lowering it to his mouth. The cabbie was copying his movements.

"_Sherlock_!" John yelled, willing him with all his might to stop it. _Idiot! What the hell are you doing?_

He wasn't stopping.

"Not this time, you bastard," John murmured, and he reached to pull his Browning from his waistband.

* * *

"Sorry, but who exactly are you?"

John, who had been busy watching Sherlock, started as Lestrade appeared next to him. "We have met. Twice now. That time with the body, then the time you broke into my flat-"

Lestrade rolled his eyes. "I do remember, Doctor Watson. I'm not quite as useless as he believes," he said wryly, gesturing over to the ambulance that Sherlock was seated in. "But how do you know him?"

"Oh, Christ." John rubbed a hand across his eyes. "It's a bit of a long story," he hedged. He wouldn't have felt much like explaining his and Sherlock's history at the best of times, never mind to the head police officer at the scene of the murder he'd just committed.

"Huh." Lestrade frowned at him thoughtfully. "Here, what's your first name?"

"John."

"John?" Lestrade's eyes widened. "No. No way. Not _that _John."

"Um."

"Bloody hell," Lestrade gazed at him like he was some kind of divine being. "Most of the guys thought he'd made you up."

Sherlock had been telling people about him? "What exactly did he say-?"

"If you're quite finished, Lestrade, we really should be off," Sherlock cut in as he strode up beside them.

Lestrade was momentarily distracted. "You haven't given your statement-"

Sherlock sighed heavily. "It'll have to wait. I'm in shock. See? I've got a _blanket_," he said, as if that fact settled everything.

"Sherlock-"

"Hang on." John interrupted their bickering, nodding to the Jag that had just pulled up. "Looks like we're having a party."

"Good evening, gentlemen," Mycroft said archly, sliding out of the back and straightening his coat.

"Oh, _God_." Sherlock turned his glare skywards, just in case God couldn't already tell how angry he was.

"So nice to see you again, John." John was taken aback. If he wasn't mistaken, then Mycroft had actually sounded _sincere_.

"Aha!" Lestrade exclaimed, pointing to John accusingly. "It _is_ you!"

"For the love of- Sherlock, what the hell have you been saying about me?"

Sherlock glared at Lestrade intently. "_Nothing_."

"Nothing, my _arse_." He grinned, and in a stage whisper added, "You were right about his eyes."

Sherlock looked as if he were about to spontaneously combust.

"Dear me," Mycroft said, smiling placidly. "I think I may have arrived at an inopportune moment."

"Oh, for-" Sherlock had apparently been vexed into speechlessness. Face flushed, he spun on his heel and marched off, stopping only to throw his luminous orange shock blanket through the open window of Mycroft's car.

"Well, that's my cue to leave," John said after a brief pause. Lestrade and Mycroft looked at him.

"See you very soon, John," Mycroft said, in that significant way of his. John rolled his eyes. He expected nothing less from him. He nodded to Lestrade, who smiled back at him in amusement. He turned and jogged after Sherlock.

"So, when exactly did you tell Lestrade about me and my eyes?" he asked curiously when he'd caught up. Sherlock automatically slowed his pace to match John's shorter stride. He sighed again.

"Withdrawal. Well, so he tells me. Don't remember much myself, but he says I got very chatty when-" Sherlock abruptly shut up. "This is ridiculous." He stopped walking and moved to face John. He swallowed. "Do you want to share the flat?"

He really shouldn't have been surprised by how easy the decision was. If, after all these years, the ache of missing Sherlock still hadn't faded, did he really expect it to ever go away? Meeting that gaze again, clear from the haze that the drugs had always given them... "Obviously."

Sherlock hummed in agreement. "Good." After a moment of comfortable silence, Sherlock asked, "Shouldn't this be more, well… awkward?"

John considered. "Why?"

"We didn't exactly part ways of good terms, did we?" Sherlock grimaced. "Which is largely my fault, I'm aware."

"Well," said John thoughtfully, "I suppose that all the problems we had have sorted themselves out, haven't they? How long have you been clean?"

"Five years, more or less. When I first met Lestrade. He wouldn't let me work with the police unless I got sober, so… I did." He frowned, visibly upset. "I should've tried harder for you-"

"Stop," John held up a hand. "I know you, Sherlock. I knew that you would only get clean if it was on your terms; no one else's." With barely a pause, he added, "Dinner?"

"Starving."

It was impossible to tell who started giggling first. Despite the fact that they were still within full view of Mycroft, Lestrade, and the Yarders at the crime scene, they couldn't stop. Their giggles evolved into outright howls of laughter, as they clung on to one another to avoid falling over, dizzy with mirth.

"Ah, fuck, but I missed you," chuckled John, wiping his eyes. Sherlock tried to reign in his breathing.

"Me too." They looked at one another for a moment until Sherlock spoke. "Stop it. We're not teenagers anymore. It's ridiculous."

"Completely embarrassing," John agreed. "Let's go."

It was that simple as that. Just the day before, John had been thinking of putting a bullet in his brain. Fewer than thirty-six hours later, he was walking home to his new flat with Sherlock Holmes. He briefly thought about taking hold of Sherlock's hand, but he didn't. Not yet. There would be time for that. Yes, John mused, peeking out the side of his eye at Sherlock's barely contained grin. They had plenty of time.

* * *

**I chose a kind of depressing song because this fic was meant to be really angsty but then I had a complete change of heart, chopped off about a third of the length and made it a bit happier. I love happy endings; I just find them really hard to write. Hopefully you don't think this one's too bad.**


End file.
